


R and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

by knightinbrightfeathers



Series: are you ready for the country (club au) [4]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Fencing, Gen, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, country club au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 13:12:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6425371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightinbrightfeathers/pseuds/knightinbrightfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are bad days and Bad Days. Grantaire does his best to keep the former from becoming the latter, but sometimes he needs a little help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	R and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

> There's homophobic language, people ignoring someone else being verbally abused, and a lot of bad feelings in here. Also, Grantaire is depressed.  
> I'm sorry. I promise the next one will be happy.

Back when Grantaire drank his breakfast, and a long, long time after he substituted water for wine and toast for tequila, bad days came in capitals: Bad Days. Good Days were nonexistent. Slowly they became merely rare, and now, Bad Days come along once in a blue moon.

Regular bad days, however, the kind where you hit your elbow on everything and spill coffee down your shirt and your shoelace snaps and your bills arrive in the mail even though you subscribe to the online service… those still happen. Not a lot, but just enough to remind him. Pick yourself up. Don't give in. Tell someone. It's okay to be a piece of shit, so long as you try to be the least crappy you can be.

And then there are those days he just can't seem to fix. No amount of naps or food or even tidying up the little apartment he calls home, a reluctant last resort if the mess feels oppressive and horrible and even Éponine can't drag him out of it, even Joly can't calm him down, even Bossuet can't pun him into a semblance of good cheer, will improve these days. Sometimes you just have to last until tomorrow.

These are the Bad Days: The days Grantaire can't get out of bed. The days he thinks longingly of heady bottomless bottles. The days the drop from his tiny balcony doesn't seem all that bad. Those don't happen anymore ( _they don’t, they don’t, they don’t_ , like a chant meant to banish his demons). But in the back of his head lies the knowledge that every bad day can turn into a Bad Day in the blink of an eye.

Well, it can go screw itself.

 

It starts innocuously enough. Grantaire’s alarm goes off and begins running around the room (Cosette’s idea of a White Elephant gift. If there was a fairy godmother at her christening, it was a goblin) until Grantaire gets up and smothers it into silence. Then he goes through the usual routine - too lazy to shave, nothing to do about the hair, where's that shoe - juggles his bag and coffee thermos and keys so he can lock the door, even though he does this every day and should be more organized about it, and takes the stairs two at a time instead of waiting for the elevator, because Thursdays Mrs. Koppel does her shopping and she always holds up the elevator on her way out because her little shopping basket on wheels sticks. It's a routine worn smooth by repetition.

He makes it to the bus stop just as the last passenger boards, squeezing himself in after them with an apologetic grimace. It's a tight fit inside the bus as it always is, air heavy with the smell of humanity and Axe and exhaust. Grantaire tries to breathe through his mouth.

The bus bumps and rattles through streets that Grantaire _knows_ aren't riddled with potholes. When Grantaire was very little, there was a time when he wanted to be a bus driver. The dream has long faded into obscurity, like the dream of becoming the next Francis Bacon and the dream of becoming a superhero, but as the bus turns a street corner and Grantaire is thrown against a pigeon chest reeking of something called Blunt Trauma or Thunder Puma, he wonders if road rage is a requirement. He's not very good at being angry, but he could probably use the extra income.

“Get offa me,” Pigeon Chest grunts, pushing Grantaire off of him and almost making Grantaire flatten an old lady who really shouldn't be standing on the bus.

“Hey, watch it,” Grantaire says. “It's crowded in here.”

“You watch it, fag,” Pigeon Chest says, puffing up and scowling at Grantaire.

 _Oooh, how original_ , Grantaire thinks. He keeps quiet, though, because there's no fighting stupidity.

“Yeah, fag,” squeaks a voice from the vicinity of Pigeon Chest’s armpit, a very unfortunate vicinity indeed. There's another scrawny teen there, half hidden behind Pigeon Chest.

A third teenager joins in, this one squinting at him over Pigeon Chest’s shoulder. “Yeah, fag,” he says, voice cracking and soaring. “Watch it.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes and takes a drink from his thermos, which sparks another round of insults, to the tune of “look at the fag with his faggot bottle”. It's a travel cup, okay, and he loves this cup. Jehan got him this cup. It's got a Georgia O’Keefe printed on it.

“Hey, fag, nice yoga pants! You got those in pink?”

A few of the passengers glare at him, and Grantaire hunches his shoulders against their gaze. He feels like a coward, and helpless and friendless in the face of blind hatred.

It's a long bus ride, from one end of town to the other, and it's never seemed longer. The bus driver doesn't even make eye contact when Grantaire tells him to have a nice day.

Screw him, anyways. Dance instructor is a much cooler job.

 

“Hey, R!” Bahorel calls. He's grinning, hands on hips, dreads tied back with a bandana the color of old blood. “Come help me demonstrate!”

Everyone who goes to the gym at the MAYR Center is a little afraid of Bahorel, but Grantaire’s seen Bahorel with kids enough times to know that he's the Gordon Ramsay of boxing: intimidating until you're small and wobbly-lipped, and then he's full of compassion and really nice hugs.

He does have the _worst_ ideas, however.

Grantaire waves a hand and keeps walking. “I just finished teaching a kickboxing class, _mon pote._ Maybe next time.”

“Come on, man! It'll be fun! You don't even have to hit me back!”

Grantaire makes a face. “Stand there and get beat up? No, thanks.”

“Nah, it's a wrestling throw. It won't even hurt. You'll land on the nice squishy gym mats.” Bahorel waves a hand at the gym mats like a magician’s apprentice presenting a woman chopped into two. “What, are you chicken?”

Grantaire sighs, already regretting both his choice of shortcut and his pathetic, easily bruised ego. “What kind of boxing class are you running here, anyway?” he asks, abandoning the outskirts of the gym and making a beeline towards Bahorel’s little group of gawking teenagers. It's a little too close to the morning’s experience for comfort, but one of the teens is wearing a Hello Kitty sweatshirt and another is wearing galaxy legwarmers, which makes Grantaire feel a little better.

“Thanks, R, I owe you so much boo…”

Grantaire shakes his head frantically.

“... boot polish!”

The teenagers all look down at Grantaire’s grayish gym shoes.

“Okay, so you just stand here, and come at me.” Bahorel positions Grantaire behind a punching bag. “Like, pretend you're hiding.”

“You already know I'm here,” Grantaire grumbles, but he obliges.

“Watch this, guys, R isn't gonna repeat this for us.” Bahorel half-turns away from Grantaire. “Oh dearie me, I am merely a poor old lady on her way home. I hope some scary mugger doesn't beat me up and take my wallet.”

“Seriously?” Grantaire asks.

“I _said,_ ” Bahorel says loudly, “I'm a defenseless old woman. Dearie me and possibly lawks.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes and charges Bahorel.

He sees Bahorel turning and dropping to one knee to catch him in the stomach with a shoulder.  There's a moment of darkness and a feeling of weightlessness, and when Grantaire opens his eyes, he's somehow slumped on top of the punching bag.

Kind of slumped. Mostly slipping -

Grantaire scrambles for a handhold and ends up sitting with his legs wrapped around the chain holding the bag up.

“This is like, the funniest thing since Thomas Sanders,” one of the girls says. “I've got to take a picture.”

“No one is taking pictures,” Grantaire says, in what he hopes is a calm and authoritative tone. Based on the look she gives him, it's so far from calm and authoritative that he might as well be singing the song from Eurovision.

“Just jump down, R, I'll catch you,” Bahorel says, spreading his arms. His grin is so wide it's a wonder that the top of his head doesn't fall off.

“No,” Grantaire says. The girl's fetched her phone out of her bag and is squinting at him with a very _considering_ look.

One of the boys nudges her. “Do a vine.”

The other boy nods his head. “Oh my god, yes. Put on Wrecking Ball!”

Grantaire can see the whole scene unfolding before his eyes. The vine. The viral internet sensation. The humiliation. Getting fired.

Bahorel, grin stretching with every second, reaches out an arm to set the punching bag swinging…

Grantaire throws himself off the punching bag straight into what would theoretically be Bahorel’s waiting arms. As it is, he knocks them both to the ground.

“Ow, holy _fuck,_ ” Bahorel says.

“Oh look, it's two,” Wrecking Ball boy says. “We gotta clear up the gym, guys.”

Which means Grantaire has another kickboxing class in ten minutes.

Maybe he can get Jehan to switch with him.

 

“Keep up, everyone! I know it's hard. Just a few more minutes!”

Grantaire’s finding it hard to walk the fine line between encouraging and sarcastic right now. It's a class of suburban moms, so he really should try being a little peppier, but he isn't good at peppy on a normal day, and today is a huge steaming pile of shit. At this point, the only thing that's stopping him from sitting down on the hardwood floor and making sad whining sounds is the fact that today's a Thursday.

Also, it would be fucking embarrassing.

“How's it going in the back row, ladies?” Grantaire calls.  He gets a chorus of cries for help. They all sound pretty fake, but it can't hurt to make sure no one's going to pass out on him. It's actually happened before, in a younger class. A twenty year old girl just crumpled to the floor, and he'd thought she'd kill him when he asked her if she'd eaten that day. He hopes she'd used the phone number he'd given her. She never came back.

A bunch of soccer moms is less likely to harbor _that_ kind of eating disorder, but there's always one who'll slip in her own shadow if given a chance.

“Good going, ladies, keep it up,” Grantaire says. He skirts around the sides of the room. “Nice kicking there, Helene. Careful not to lose your balance, Shannon.”

“What, my kicking isn't nice enough for you, Monsieur R?” one of the women asks playfully.

There's always one who thinks she's a cougar, too. Grantaire pastes a tolerant smile on his face and turns to look at her.

“I don't know, Marie, why don't-”

That's when someone's elbow clips his eye.

“ _Merde,_ ” Grantaire says, before clapping a hand over his eye and going off into a silent string of much less appropriate curses.

“Oh no, are you alright?” They all cluster around him until Shannon tells them to give him space. Thank God for Shannon.

“Well now he definitely can't see your kicking, Marie,” someone titters.

The sheer silliness of the comment brings Grantaire back to himself. He cuts the lesson short, glad for the excuse, and locks up before he slinks away to wash his eye. It's not so bad, really - he's had seriously bad black eyes before, and this is only a bruise in the bone.

Grantaire knows he should at least go visit Joly - the bruise will probably be visible tomorrow, and then Joly will be hurt and disappointed in him for not taking care of himself properly - but instead he pops an Advil and goes to the staff kitchen for ice.

 

Grantaire loves his kiddie class, but today he can't quite take the loud dissonant booms and clacks that seem to echo in the dance studio, echoing against the mirrored walls and throbbing in his temples. Every overly enthusiastic stomp makes him glance at the clock. Six drags its heels like a sulky toddler at a toy store. Five past six… ten past six… twelve past six…

When quarter past six comes Grantaire pauses the music with the speed and precision of Elizaveta Tuktamysheva. The littles stare at him with slightly shell-shocked expressions that would be utterly adorable if they didn't make Grantaire feel like an utter ass.

“That's it for today, _mes petits crottes_ ,” Grantaire says, because children sense lies like blood in the water. “Everyone get your things.”

By six twenty the children are crowding outside the studio door, and their parents are taking bags from tiny shoulders and saying good night to Grantaire, who nods and grins and thanks God for the first time since he was thirteen because even Rene’s papa is here to pick him up.

When the crowd dwindles away, Grantaire packs up his speakers, looks around for forgotten belongings and turns off the lights. He's just shut the door behind him when a plaintive little voice says, “Monsieur R?”

“Yes, Ellie?” Grantaire asks. There are no adults around apart from himself, and he isn't Ellie’s father, and he definitely isn't Ellie’s mother, which means…

“Papa hasn't come for me,” Ellie says, her big blue eyes filling with tears.

“I'm sure he'll be here in a second,” Grantaire says stupidly. He's too tightly strung today, that's the problem.

“He forgot me,” Ellie says, lip quivering.

“Of course he didn't,” Grantaire says. “He could never forget such a wonderful little girl.”

This, of course, makes Ellie burst into tears, proper child tears, blobby and sticky and complete with a red face and snot bubbles. Papa forgot her, and it's all her fault, because she's not a wonderful girl at _all_ , she's a horrible girl who didn't finish her milk this morning and Papa doesn't love her anymore and it's all her fault.

Grantaire crouches down, staring the bawling mouth in the tonsils. He's tempted to cry and scream that his daddy doesn't love him either, but _he_ doesn't cry like a little baby about it. Instead he ignores the little voice telling him that wine would make his headache go away and promises Ellie that her father is on the way.

She's just arrived at the hiccups stage when her dad comes striding down the corridor in Armani to whisk her away. Grantaire ignores the awful sensation of deja vu- although his father usually had a phone in hand- and says sharply, “Monsieur Plourde, we encourage promptness in our patrons.” He sounds like a dick, but hey, it's six thirty four.

“I'm terribly sorry, Monsieur, I got held up at work and the babysitter has the flu-”

He looks truly apologetic, which makes Grantaire feel like even more of an asshole. “It's fine. Just don't let it happen again.”

“Of course,” Ellie’s dad says. “Did I make you miss your bus? Do you need a ride?”

Grantaire shakes his head. “No, thank you. Now, if you'll excuse me.” He picks up his bag, waves goodbye at Ellie, and takes off at a pace that can only be described as a walk because “running in front of the club members is unprofessional” has been drilled into his skull.

He's late, and there's no way he's going to make it, but Enjolras’s class always runs late, and his tap shoes are in his bag instead of around his neck, and Grantaire has experience in running like his life depends on it, and that was back when he first met Ép, when he was drinking crap vodka like water and trying to commit suicide by Montparnasse. He's in much better shape now.

...Except that shape isn't Time Turner, so no, he won't make it.

Grantaire slows down, his sprint turning into a jog, which turns into a walk which brings him to a halt in front of the door to the gym. Sheer inertia makes him push the door open and slip through.

The gym is empty.

Grantaire stares for a second before turning around.

“You're late,” Enjolras says from behind him, calm and clear. Grantaire turns around again to see Enjolras standing there in his fencing gear, one hand on his hip and his hair in a halo around a face that's…concerned.

“You noticed?” Grantaire blurts out, and God, how embarrassing.

Enjolras only looks Grantaire up and down before nodding, quick and decisive. “Come on.”

“No offense, Apollo, but I'm not in the mood for packing up equipment,” Grantaire says, trailing after Enjolras anyways. He's operating purely on automatic at this point, a coinslot machine that uses some strange living currency with perfect hair.

“I already did that,” Enjolras says.

“In your gear?” Grantaire follows Enjolras into the storage room.

“What, like it's hard?” Enjolras says, handing him a suit. “Put it on.”

Grantaire smiles a little at the reference. “This belongs to someone.”

“They're all Valjean’s, the kids just pay for them.” Enjolras gives Grantaire a little shove out of the storage room. “This is more important.”

“Me fencing?” Grantaire asks.

“You feel bad. This will help.” Enjolras matches Grantaire stare for stare, like he's trying to burn agreement into Grantaire’s skull via his eyeballs.

Grantaire relents. “Fine. But I warn you that I haven't done this in ages.”

“Nine years, I know, you said.”

Grantaire stops fiddling with the plastron straps to stare at Enjolras. “I never said nine years. I said eleventh grade.”

Enjolras shrugs. His cheeks have gone pink. “Just suit up, I haven't got all day.”

Grantaire finishes getting into the suit, which is less comfortable than he remembered, and presents himself with a flourish. “Do I please Your Majesty?”

“The monarchy is a stale remnant of the eras of oppression,” Enjolras says automatically. It makes Grantaire smile. “Do you remember how this goes?”

Grantaire shakes his head. “Remind me?”

Enjolras nods and launches into an explanation - the stance is like so, the rules are this and this - and Grantaire lets it sink in, the words bringing long-forgotten memories to light and numbing the question echoing through his head: _why?_

“Got it?” Enjolras asks, and Grantaire snaps back to the present.

“Yeah, I think,” Grantaire says, settling into the opening stance.

Enjolras corrects the set of his feet, nodding approvingly when Grantaire moves them into the right position. “I'll go easy on you, shall I?”

“Why, are you feeling in the mood to lose?”

Enjolras smirks at him and salutes, quick and simple. Grantaire musters up the most elaborate salute he can remember and is rewarded with Enjolras’s laugh.

“ _En_ _garde_!” Enjolras says, and they both don their masks. Grantaire’s smells of someone else's sweat and something sweet, like hair cream.

“ _Prêt_!” Enjolras says, muffled through the mask. “ _Allez_!”

Their foils meet. Grantaire can tell that Enjolras is going easy on him, their pace slow as his body remembers long forgotten movements. The first time he manages to land a hit on Enjolras, they speed up.

This isn't the competitive fencing Grantaire used to do, the kind Enjolras teaches. There's no referee, no one calling halt. It's more like a sword duel with fencing technique than anything, odder than it would otherwise be because Enjolras is such a purist and is still holding perfect form.

Parry, one, two, lunge, one, two, three, parry-riposte, one, two, and Grantaire feels alive in the very best of ways. The kind of alive that is his body telling him, _here is your head, here are your legs, here are your lungs; take a breath, feel the way your heart is in love with the rest of you, how it keeps you alive,_ and his mind chiming in, _yes, you are human, you are thought and breath, soul and bone, you are made for life._

It ends abruptly. One moment they're locked in combat, and Grantaire thinks he can almost see _through_ the mask to Enjolras’s face and through that to the electricity of his thoughts, synapses firing quick quick quick and somewhere in all of the mess of consciousness, this match, and what it means-

And the next Feuilly’s raised voice cuts through Grantaire’s concentration. “Hey, kids, I've got a job to do.”

They both stop in their tracks and take a few steps backwards. Enjolras lets his foil drop and takes off his mask.

“Oh, it's you,” Feuilly says, amused. “You know you don't get paid overtime, Enjolras.”

“Sorry, Feuilly, I lost track of time.” Enjolras glances at Grantaire. “We can clean up… ” The end of the sentence is almost a question.

Grantaire hesitates for a moment before taking off his mask, but decides he has nothing to hide. The air in the gym smells amazingly fresh after the helmet. “Phew. Yeah, shouldn't take too long.”

“I suppose just this once…” Feuilly trails off, obviously reluctant to do half a job, but also obviously eager to go home.

“We won't tell Valjean,” Grantaire promises. “And you have a date with Ép later, right? Go home, we got this.”

Feuilly looks from Enjolras, flushed from exertion and the scrutiny, to Grantaire, curls clinging to damp cheeks and grin threatening to escape his face, and throws his hands up in the air. “You know what, just this once.”

“We clean up in here every Thursday,” Enjolras protests.

“Yeah, and you do a shit job at it,” Feuilly says. “Whatever, I'll do it tomorrow morning.”

“Have a good night,” Enjolras says, in what in a lesser man would be called a sulky tone.

“Knock her socks off,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras laughs when Feuilly flips him off. It makes him into something more beautiful and more human than any angel could be, although it's quite likely that Grantaire’s biased. “Go get her, tiger!”

Feuilly’s scandalized look is almost as good as the duel.

“I feel like a bad influence,” Grantaire says, laughing.

“ _Au contraire_ ,” Enjolras says. “Come on, let's get this sweaty gear off and make Feuilly’s morning a little less busy tomorrow.”

They clean up in companionable silence, broken only by Enjolras’s tuneless humming and the swish of the brooms. Grantaire is glad for the quiet, appreciates Enjolras not asking him if he feels better. He feels as if he should have a lot to think about, but the adrenaline has receded and he's crashing.

Enjolras gives him the side-eye as they lock up. For Enjolras, he's being amazingly subtle.

“I'm not going to collapse on the way home, Apollo,” Grantaire blurts. “Seriously. Relax.”

“Okay,” Enjolras says. “I mean, I know you can take care of yourself. But, um.”

“But what?”

Enjolras dithers for a moment. It would be very worrying if Grantaire had the energy. “Do you- do you want a ride home? It'll be shorter than the bus.”

Grantaire blinks. “Sure.”

They wave goodbye to Cosette, waiting patiently at the reception desk for her father to come out of his office.

Enjolras’s hybrid smells of him, and the quiet hum of the engine calms Grantaire down a little more. There's a nervous tension running through Enjolras, but Grantaire is too tired to even keep his eyes open. He gives his address and let's his head thump against the headrest.

“We're here,” Enjolras says, a second before the GPS in his phone beeps.

Grantaire shakes himself awake from the half doze he'd fallen into. “Thanks.” He unbuckles his seat belt and opens the door.

“R?” There's a moment where Grantaire looks back and they make not eye contact but Eye Contact, and then Enjolras smiles and it passes.

“Good night,” he says.

“Good night,” Grantaire echoes, glad that whatever it is has been shelved for another time.

 

As bad days go, Grantaire muses, falling into bed, it could have been worse.

**Author's Note:**

> Georgia O'Keefe is famous for her yonic illustrations of flowers (yonic means they look like vulvas).  
> Francis Bacon painted lots of portraits in which the subject is twisted, all very existentialist and bleak and all that jazz; Grantaire, I think, would find his art fascinating.  
> "Mon pote", I am led to believe, means "friend" but in a "dude" kind of way. "Mes petits crottes" ("mon petit crotte" means "my little goat-cheese" or "my little droppings") is actually an acceptable thing to say to children in France, because once again, the French are weird.  
> Elizaveta Tuktamysheva is a Russian figure skater. She's an Olympian Champion as well of a Pretty Much Every Other Competition Champion.  
> Grantaire is Sefardi Jewish. Bahorel is black. Enjolras is white and probably French all the way back to when the first French caveman decided that everything should smell of piss. C'est tout.  
> What details of E's and R's duel I included are as true to real life as I could make them, but I know nothing about fencing. A plastron is "a half-jacket worn under the jacket for padding or for safety."


End file.
